After taking a bus to Dallas, traveling through the night, catching a layover in Seattle, and eventually getting on a plane from Seattle to Anchorage, the boys’ varsity basketball team finally landed in Alaska on Thursday, Jan. 22. After their lengthy journey, the team finished in third place with wins against two of Anchorage’s hometown teams: the Colony Knights and the East Thunderbirds.

Despite the long hours of travel and the three-hour time difference, Coach Shelby Lewis says that the experience of playing in Anchorage was worth it.

“Yeah, we travel all over. We go to Florida, Texas, Missouri, and Kansas. We kind of go all over the place, but that was the longest trip ever. And so, when we calculate how many miles we travel, we might travel 4,000 miles over the course of the season, but we’ve never traveled 4,000 miles on one trip. [It was a] very, very long day, but it was fantastic,” Lewis said.

Lewis says that Alaska was a completely different and fresh atmosphere from being in Little Rock, especially in the cold weather of January.

“Once we got there and got settled in, it’s like being in a National Geographic documentary or something,” Lewis said. “There’s mountains everywhere, and it’s quiet and peaceful. When we were there, the sun didn’t come all the way up; it was almost like somebody left a lamp on all day.”

Junior Daylon Thomas similarly says he felt grateful for the opportunity to play halfway across the country to gain new experiences playing against different people.

“Sometimes I was ready to go home, but I think the trip was good for us, [it was] a different experience with playing better teams, so we could be prepared when we come back and play,” said Thomas.

In addition, senior Jacob Marshall describes how the environment of Anchorage was welcoming, regardless of the regional differences.

“Alaska was great overall; it was a very cold new experience. You see different kids and stuff you’ve never seen before, different talent,” Marshall said. “It was a new world, but we still had some people supporting us during the games.”

In spite of the culture shock of being in a new state, Coach Lewis says the people he met while visiting were incredibly kind and inviting.

“Anchorage, Alaska, has got to be one of the friendliest places of all time. I mean, everybody was super welcoming,” Lewis said. “Anytime you went anywhere, someone stopped to talk to you and gave you advice on eating at this place or that place, or what you should do while you’re here.”

Even across the country, the team was able to find similarities to their own student body.

“It’s very diverse in Alaska, there’s a lot of natives and just a lot of different cultures that you don’t get to see on a day-to-day,” said Lewis. “I thought that was really cool because Central is so diverse, and to see an entire city that, to me, [does not have] the same cultures, but as far as diversity goes, was very similar to Central.”